Kashmir Talks Finish Without An Agreement

June 13, 1999|By PAMELA CONSTABLE The Washington Post

NEW DELHI, India — The eight-hour visit by Pakistan's foreign minister on Saturday appears to have done little to ease the bitter disagreement between India and Pakistan regarding who is responsible for the current conflict over the disputed border territory of Kashmir and what must be done to restore peace between the rival neighbors.

Before returning to Islamabad, Pakistan's foreign minister, Sartaj Aziz, said he had "no illusions" about solving the problem in one brief visit, but added, "I refuse to be pessimistic. ... I can say at least the chances of further escalation do not seem strong."

He said that both countries have a "huge stake" in restoring the cooperative spirit established when their prime ministers met in February in Lahore, Pakistan, and that he had made some suggestions Saturday about how that could be done.

But Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh set a far bleaker, more unyielding tone in describing his talks with Aziz. He said he had made it "very clear" to his Pakistani counterpart that Pakistan must pull back the guerrillas who occupy a portion of Indian-controlled Kashmir or there can be no further diplomatic progress on solving the crisis.

"We made our position clear. The onus is on Pakistan," Singh said. By sending fighters into Indian Kashmir, he said, Pakistan violated the Lahore agreement "even before the ink was dry. ... We now await their response to our demand to vacate this armed intrusion and aggression."

India and Pakistan have been engaged since mid-May in a low-level border war over Kashmir, which both countries claim. When India discovered that several hundred insurgents had infiltrated its portion of the Himalayan region, it launched air strikes and sent thousands of ground troops to the area, and the fighting has continued since.

Both sides have suffered numerous casualties. Two Indian MiG fighter planes and a helicopter were shot down last month near the Line of Control that separates Indian and Pakistani Kashmir, and India claims that Pakistani forces tortured and executed six Indian soldiers whose bodies were returned to India and buried last week.

No date has been set for further bilateral talks, and Indian officials said their military forces will continue to attack the insurgents aggressively. Military officials said Friday they are "inching forward" in their efforts to surround and drive back or kill the rebels, but that the extreme conditions and high terrain make progress slow and difficult.

The immediate stumbling block to any diplomatic solution is that India insists that the insurgency is an operation of the Pakistani army, which Pakistan can and must shut down. On Friday, Indian officials produced tapes of two alleged phone conversations between two top Pakistani military officials who seemed to be directing the operation and telling civilian officials what to say about it.

But Pakistan, while acknowledging last week that it has some troops inside Indian Kashmir, has insisted that the rebels now occupying positions in the mountainous Kargil region are largely Kashmiri "freedom fighters" over whom it has little control. It accuses India of being the aggressor by launching air strikes and shelling across the Line of Control.

A number of countries, including China and the United States, have called on India and Pakistan to de-escalate the Kashmir conflict and find a peaceful solution.